The original problem was laid out in 1954 at the University of Cambridge, and was very straightforward: find the solutions for x3+y3+z3=k, with k being all the numbers from one to 100. Some of them are pretty obvious. Just take 1, 2, and 3, sum their cubes, and you end up with 1+8+27=36 — so you have an answer to 36. You can be a bit clever and use -1 instead of 1, which leaves you with -1+8+27=34, and you have another solution. After you take out all these easy solutions, you’re left with some weird ones though.
There should be a solution for all numbers, but two proved particularly different to crack: 33 and 42. Thanks to a creative approach (and a week at a world-leading supercomputer), Professor Andrew Booker managed to solve it for 33. Coincidence or not, the only remaining number was 42 — which fans of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy will recognize as “the answer to Everything”, according to a fictional computing machine that worked for 7 million years.The original problem was laid out in 1954 at the University of Cambridge, and was very straightforward: find the solutions for x3+y3+z3=k, with k being all the numbers from one to 100. Some of them are pretty obvious. Just take 1, 2, and 3, sum their cubes, and you end up with 1+8+27=36 — so you have an answer to 36. You can be a bit clever and use -1 instead of 1, which leaves you with -1+8+27=34, and you have another solution. After you take out all these easy solutions, you’re left with some weird ones though.
There should be a solution for all numbers, but two proved particularly different to crack: 33 and 42. Thanks to a creative approach (and a week at a world-leading supercomputer), Professor Andrew Booker managed to solve it for 33. Coincidence or not, the only remaining number was 42 — which fans of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy will recognize as “the answer to Everything”, according to a fictional computing machine that worked for 7 million years.The original problem was laid out in 1954 at the University of Cambridge, and was very straightforward: find the solutions for x3+y3+z3=k, with k being all the numbers from one to 100. Some of them are pretty obvious. Just take 1, 2, and 3, sum their cubes, and you end up with 1+8+27=36 — so you have an answer to 36. You can be a bit clever and use -1 instead of 1, which leaves you with -1+8+27=34, and you have another solution. After you take out all these easy solutions, you’re left with some weird ones though.
There should be a solution for all numbers, but two proved particularly different to crack: 33 and 42. Thanks to a creative approach (and a week at a world-leading supercomputer), Professor Andrew Booker managed to solve it for 33. Coincidence or not, the only remaining number was 42 — which fans of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy will recognize as “the answer to Everything”, according to a fictional computing machine that worked for 7 million years.
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